No big topic today, just a few incomplete thoughts about the game that have been rattling around in my head.

Flying. At last, over the weekend, I completed Legion Pathfinder Part 2. The long pole in the tent for me was getting revered with Legionfall Armies. I had lost a couple days questing the previous weekend (in-laws from hell), so I had been scrambling all week. I finished all available Broken Shore quests Saturday and was still about 50 rep points short, feeling a bit frustrated to be so close yet so far. Then I completed my class hall missions, and lo and behold my Valarjar rep mission got a bonus token, and it turned out to be for Legionfall Armies! Ta-da!

I was honestly expecting some final admin quests, like visit a trainer or watch a cutscene or something, to actually start flying, but no, as soon as I got the achievement my flying mounts magically began flying again. Nice. Also my alts had no problems, all of them were able to fly immediately, no bugs in the implementation that I could see.

And how glorious it is! I was surprised at how far it goes to lessen the perception of eternal grinding in the game. It really speeds up the world quest times, and it is luxurious to avoid all those “en route” mobs that dog you at every step, especially in Broken Shore. It is terrific to not have to wait for a whistle cooldown before you can leave a completed quest area (although I love the taxi whistle). It is great to be able to swoop down on the way to another quest and gather a mining node or herb you happen to see. And it is just fun to see the zones from another perspective, to get an idea of their size and layout from the air rather than the worm’s eye view on the ground.

I am not especially opposed to Blizz’s new pattern of waiting until a patch to get flying in a new expansion, and I don’t mind completing some achievements for it. But I do think flying should come in the first major patch, not wait until what is effectively the third one (7.1, 7.1.5, 7.2). Seven months of slogging along on the ground seems a bit much to me. Most of us don’t need that much “immersion”, thank you very much, to get the artistic flavor of an expansion.

Flying will also help a lot with leveling and gearing up alts. I was able to take one alt through the Broken Shore intro stuff and get some of the class hall upgrades yesterday in about 3 hours. And I took a couple others through 3 emissary quests each in very short order, including being able to pick up enough ore on one to get the two turn-in quests for level 2 mining. Flying alone will not fix the horrible paths to professions and alt gearing that Blizz has set up in Legion, but it definitely will speed some of the process.

Plus, it is great fun — an element that has been missing in the game for me lately.

Class Hall efficiencies. In addition to flying, some 7.2 changes in class hall mechanics help with alt development. I don’t spend a lot of time any of in my class halls, basically only go there for required progression. For example, I do as few champion missions as possible. But Blizz’s streamlining of things like order hall resources needed for research and time required for completion of various steps do help. Also, the speeded up paths for gathering massive quantities of AP are a welcome addition. In the last week, I have lept ahead quite a bit in my order hall chores on a couple of alts.

Honestly, part of my angst with the whole class hall thing is that I find it “nitpickily” complex. I have yet to get a sense for everything that must be done to get up to speed in a character’s class hall, and I have now six characters at level 110. But I still feel lost when it comes to know what next steps I need in order to get to an end game state in their class halls. Artifact research, order hall research, class questlines, class hall questlines to get the third relic slot open, figuring out the ways to get assistants for my champions, figuring out how to gear my champions (not all class halls offer the same options), figuring out what the “extra” perk is for each class and then remembering to use it regularly, etc. etc. Not to mention the confusing physical layout of some class halls — I still wander aimlessly in the warlock one every time I have to go there.

It’s just too messy and confusing. Please, Blizz, if you are not going to give us a guild hall or player housing in the next expansion, give up on the whole garrison mechanic. You tried. It didn’t work. Move on.

World quests. I still like these. I like that they give decent gear if you are just starting out. I like that most of them are relatively quick to do. I like that there is some variety in the game activities (PvP, professions, pet battles, raids and instances, standard PvE) you can engage in to complete some of them. I especially like that the emissary quests persist for three days, allowing those of us dealing with real life to take a play break once in a while and not miss any of them.

The only puzzling thing to me is why Blizz decided to abandon the WQ model for Broken Shore dailies. Now that I have flying, I am not so annoyed by this decision, but I still don’t understand the reasoning. I think WQs in general have been well received by most players, so I am not sure why Blizz would essentially regress for Broken Shore.

And while I am at it, after a couple weeks of demonic invasions in Legion, I am not feeling any more receptive to the timing mechanics of them. I have one more to do to complete all four for the achievement, and when that is done, I will be done with them too. I find them tedious and long. I think I would have liked them better if they had just been scenarios like we had in Mists, or if they popped up frequently like they did in pre-Legion and were essentially always available and quick to complete, or if they were just specialized world quests (without the final couple of required quests and the scenario) that slightly advanced the story line. Honestly, I am not sure what one thing I don’t like about them, but I am decidedly not a fan and will not be doing them as soon as I complete the achievement.

Obliterum forge. For me, the best thing about 7.2’s change to the obliterum forge is not the fact that you no longer have to do that ridiculous and expensive quest line in order to unlock it, but that finally that stupid burning cart is gone from from the commerce exchange area. Hallelujah!

Blizz and hunters. MMO-C had an interesting blue post summary a couple of days ago. It was a thoughtful blue response to some Brewmaster Monk concerns from PTR players. It struck me because this is exactly the kind of responsive dialog hunters have been begging Blizz for ever since the early days of Legion’s closed beta.

Dozens and dozens of hunters have given Blizz exactly the same sort of thoughtful, observant comments we see from the monk poster in the cited blue post, and Blizz has steadfastly ignored every single one of them, has never once deigned to even recognize there are fundamental problems with hunter class mechanics. Yet we see this very respectful and in-depth response to Brewmasters. And it is by no means the first such — months ago there was a series of blue posts that painstakingly explained Blizz’s philosophy on the Brewmaster spec and outlined where they saw the spec going in the future, how they envisioned it should be played, et cetera and ad nauseaum. All because a few Brewmasters had expressed worries over their testing on the beta.

I was particularly touched by Blizz’s deep concern over the perceived Brewmaster angst with a clunky, hesitating play style. Here are a few astonishing excerpts (emphasis mine):

As you can imagine, the numbers for Blackout Strike’s cooldown and the CDR from Tiger Palm are very important to get right on this; we’ll tweak them and try a few things. We started out with the 4-beat cycle for PTR; we may also try the 3-beat cycle soon and see how that feels.

…

The common Blackout Combo-driven rotation right now is, in a way, not GCD locked, because it spends a significant amount of its time off GCD, but in practice it feels more like GCD locked, because that time is in between every few GCDs with little empty half-GCDs, adding a stutter to your rotation that we’re trying to clean up.

…
Brewmaster is not a particularly popular spec, and the awkwardness of their offensive abilities is one of the prime reasons why. That sort of thing is shrugged off by some people, really bugs some other people, and contributes to a general discomfort with a spec to most (and is usually hard for them to describe exactly why, falling back to works like ‘doesn’t flow’ or ‘clunky’).

Now, I am not trying to dump on Brewmasters who have done such a good job giving feedback to the devs, and I am sure they are correct in their assessment of the spec. Good on ’em. But,

What.

The.

Fuck.

Blizz is suddenly concerned about a slow, clumsy, stuttering play style??? They feel your pain, Brewmasters, over how the spec “feels”????

This is just unbelievable. Beastmaster Hunters have made similar comments for months, actually for over a year, and Blizz has not even tried to respond, has not in fact even admitted the play style stinks, has completely ignored every hunter comment to that effect. They dash off some quick easy tweaks, like give us back a couple of traps, or rework some Cobra Shot graphics, and call it good enough. But Brewmasters mention a little clunkiness and the devs fall all over themselves to try and fix it, expressing how concerned they are and how yes they completely understand, and oh no this is awful we simply must do something???

If we needed any further proof that Blizz considers hunters the throway class, one they simply cannot be bothered with, here it is.

There are BM hunters who have built their entire play style and gear setup around Thunderslash and its interactions, have gone to some lengths to incorporate this into their BM hunter play since 7.2 went live, have concentrated AP in this and supporting traits. Now this.

No warning.

Not even the common courtesy of an explanation.

Not even any official recognition that this is a major change. It was announced with the same fanfare as a grammar correction in a tooltip.

Silly me, I thought these kinds of wild adjustments is why there is a PTR. Has Blizz now decided the PTR is only for stress testing and raids, and live is where you try to correct all the horrid imbalances of ill-advised class restructuring?

And not for nothin’, but what about the pre-legion pronouncement from Mr. Game Director Hazzikostas that “BM hunters are in a pretty good place now”?

What about his promise to not make huge changes to classes and specs in Legion because of the increased cost to players with artifact weapon investments?

His word is clearly worthless.

Why does Blizz bend over backwards to write pages of explanations to rogues and monks and warlocks about why certain changes were made and about their overall plan for the class, but they stubbornly ignore and insult hunters with these kinds of major changes AND NOT A SINGLE EXPLANATORY COMMENT?

And lest you think this is an interim step that will be remedied in 7.2.5 with the planned class changes then, think again. Hunters are not on the list as needing any special attention in that patch. Why should they? Blizz can always just screw with them at will, can intentionally destroy a spec mid-expansion like they did with SV in WoD, can make play-altering changes in a minor hotfix — all without the inconvenient necessity of showing a bit of respect by actually dialoging with hunters.

I had begun to think Blizz was turning around from the lies and dirty tricks of WoD, was just beginning to restore some of the lost trust, was finally realizing that dialog with their customers pays off. I see I was wrong.

It’s no secret that I am beyond disgusted with the way Blizz has treated hunters ever since they trashed and then abandoned SV hunters in WoD. After promising to make SV better in “the next expansion”, they proceeded to complete their destruction of it by making it a melee spec in Legion, and a pretty puny one at that. Then they moved on to MM, basically turning it into a turret style damage dealer, removing two of the signature features of hunters — mobility and pets — in one fell swoop. Last, after Ion Hazzikostas told us how BM hunters were “in a pretty good place” just prior to Legion, Blizz went on to ransack that spec, too, removing nearly all possibility of skill play in favor of a couple of cooldowns the player had almost zero control over except to mash the button as soon as they were up.

When the Legion Alpha test went live, skilled and well-respected hunters diligently measured, analyzed, and described to Blizz the many ways the hunter class came up short. Their focus was on play style, not on numbers, and they tried every way possible to make Blizz understand that the very soul of hunters had been ripped away.

Blizz ignored them.

Then when the beta test finally went live, a lot more hunters voiced their anguish to Blizz, again not so much about numbers, but about the fact that the class they had played and loved for years had been stripped of every trace of what made the class unique. Again, these players wrote thousands of pages of feedback in the approved forums, detailing all the factors that contributed to what they perceived was the death of the class.

Blizz ignored them.

By this point, sadly, the leading community hunters had pretty much given up, bruised and battered after months of talking to a brick wall. But then the PTR went live, and hunters who had not previously tried the Legion hunter class expressed their keen sense of loss and anger, again writing reams of comments about the mechanics that made them feel they were no longer true hunters.

Blizz ignored them.

And when I say “Blizz ignored them”, I mean not just that no changes were made or design explanations given, but that Blizz met the entire hunter outcry with a steadfast, impenetrable wall of silence. There were no blue posts that even deigned to acknowledge there might be some problems with the Legion hunter class implementation, no hunter class adjustments as builds were put out (even though there were tons for other classes), no dev mention of the problem, no recognition whatsoever of the near-universal condemnation of the changes they had made to the hunter class. Not even so such as a “F**k you, hunters, we like things the way they are.”

Then, one week before Legion went live, a CM had the chutzpah to make a blue post asking for hunter input on Legion problems. As if the thousands upon thousands of previous posts did not even exist. As if, one week before launch, it would make a difference. He even called the thread “Let’s Talk”, implying that at long last, this late in the cycle, Blizz’s wall of silence would finally be broken. Like Charlie Brown rushing to kick that football he just knew Lucy would hold still for him this time, hunters once again posted thousands of thoughtful, detailed, specific comments about every aspect of the class they felt had been ripped from them.

Blizz ignored them.

In the first Q&A after Legion launch, a few warlock trolls and scumbags bullied their way into it, spamming the pre-event thread and using flame and shame tactics to downvote every question not submitted by a warlock, and then further spamming the live event feed with spittle-flecked tantrums. After very slightly scolding them for their tactics and telling them such actions would not be successful, Ion Hazzikostas proceeded to explain how Blizz was going to fix perceived warlock class problems. Long blue posts were written on the subject, and immediate changes were made in hotfixes, along with a detailed plan for long term fixes.

Meanwhile, hunters, who had played by Blizz’s rules for feedback, who had not thrown public tantrums, continued to be ignored. Then, finally, months after the “Let’s Talk” thread appeared, weeks after the warlock meltdown, there was one relatively short blue post in the hunter forum promising significant changes to the hunter class, but hunters had to be patient, wait for 7.1 and 7.2 because of course these things take time.

Hunters waited. In 7.1, a few paltry changes appeared, nothing of course for BM, but a nerf for MM (as if that were all that was wrong with MM mechanics!), and some stuff for SV presumably to try make it at least semi-viable as a spec.

Hunters continued to wait. In 7.1.5, all hunters had traps restored, and a very slight adjustment was made to correct the awful Aspect of the Cheetah, but it cost a talent to do so. There were multiple other changes, but of note every change to BM dealt with numbers designed to buff the spec’s damage. Nothing Blizz did even began to address the fundamental problems with the spec. Pet pathing — other than slightly speeding up Hati’s slow amble to a target — remained horrible. BM hunters still had no surge ability beyond the worthless Stampede talent. Pet control remained problematic, hit-and-miss in terms of setting your pet on passive for example and having confidence it would remain so. BM hunters themselves had almost zero damage ability without a pet, effectively making them a melee damage dealer who operated out of melee range. The play style — unless you had “the” appropriate legendaries and a 4-pc tier set — remained clunky and slow, with no player control over focus generation, no skill abilities beyond mashing a cooldown button or key as soon as it became available.

Similarly, most of MM changes were to adjust numbers, little was done to address the turret play style, and nothing was done to address the underlying fact that all MM damage was RNG-dependent at its origin.

In short, in spite of months of hunter comments that the class problems were about play style, not about numbers, most of Blizz’s fixes have been to tweak numbers.

Now we are into the 7.2 PTR, and there seems to be no plan to make any further changes to hunters. Except one — shown here.

Yes, at long last, hallelujah! Hunters are finally getting the spell animation changes NO ONE has asked for! And what changes they are! Brace yourself now — Arcane Shot will soon cause much bigger weapon kick and be more purple! Barrage will have more muzzle flash! Bestial Wrath will cause that symbol to only appear over the hunter’s head, no longer the pet’s!! (Of course, there is no change to that pleasant “I am having a really hard poop” sound that accompanies it…) A few other similarly HUGE and MOMENTOUS changes, such as Black Arrow will have a bigger bullet!! (I guess it is a bullet, the demo showed a hunter with a gun…) But the big one, and the one I know all BM hunters have been waiting for: Cobra Shot will wiggle more!!! OMG, I have to sit down, this is too much.

Really, Blizz? Really? Everything that is wrong with hunters, and this is what you decide has priority?

Yesterday I published a short announcement about the fact that WoW Game Director Ion Hazzikostas, after months and months of silence, finally addressed — in very generic terms — the widespread unhappiness hunters have about our class in Legion. I described it as a positive sign. I still think it is a positive sign, but there are some significant events that must happen for me to keep that opinion.

First, the positive aspects of the announcement:

It was a substantive communication, one that outlined a plan — sketchy, but a plan nevertheless — for making the hunter class whole again. The base plan is: low hanging fruit (numbers/spec balancing) first, then talent trees, and finally spec identity and play style issues.

It was an actual communication, a huge change from the months-long silent treatment we had been subjected to.

He admitted that hunters underwent some of the most drastic class changes in Legion, that the devs had not followed up on the complex cascade of changes such a rewrite requires, and he said that they fully intend to address this shortfall in this expansion.

He acknowledged that the source of most angst among hunters is not damage numbers, but overall class feel.

He dropped a big hint that MM/BM might get traps back at some point.

He sort of weasel-worded an apology for his reference to Deterrence in Friday’s Q&A.

So there was a lot in the post that gives cause for optimism. But there are also some gigantic unanswered questions.

What took you so long to even acknowledge our concerns? Would it have killed you to stick in a few Blue posts that at least gave the illusion that you are working on the problems? Is your time so constrained that you could not have even used the word “hunters” in all your discussions of class concerns in the Q&A sessions you have had? Out of curiosity, what was the tipping point that made you finally address us this time?

Side comment: I am beginning to discern a pattern with Blizz here. They seem only to address major player concerns in response to quantity and emotional outpouring, not quality, of comments. Think back to the Big Huge Gigantic Flap over flying in WoD — absent a player tantrum, flying in the game would be but a distant memory. Think about the recent warlock bullying and spamming and holding-their-breath-until-they-turned-blue methods that did indeed get Blizz’s attention for their class. The hunter community — while declining to engage in warlock tactics — has refused to go quietly and meekly, has continued to express their anger about their treatment in Legion, piling up forum posts and tweets every day.

Why did you ignore everything hunters told you about before Legion went live? Our concerns have not changed since then, the same things we gave you for feedback in Alpha, Beta, and the PTR are what we are still pointing out. Hazzikostas said that it is complicated to make substantive class changes in a live expansion, and I get that, but this is a problem of Blizz’s own making. They had the opportunity to do it long before Legion went live, and they chose to do nothing. To say now that they have not figured out how to fix the class problems — as if they are just hearing about them for the first time — rings pretty damn hollow.

Realistically, what is the time frame for your third phase of class changes? 7.2? 7.3? Pre-patch for the next expansion? Come to think of it, when can we expect to see the second phase (talent tree) changes?

Will you now continue the dialogue with hunters, or was that Blue post intended merely to shut us up for a while? “Dialogue” can take several forms, including follow-through actions as well as additional feedback in forums and on social media. I want to believe people when they make commitments, but the sad fact is that I — and many other players — still have a lot of trust issues with Blizz. They have yet to dig themselves out of the hole they dug for themselves in WoD. Hazzikostas himself has admitted that actions speak louder than words. OK, we just had the words, now let us see some action.

Honestly, here is what I expect to see unfold with hunters going forward:

Minor nerfs to BM and MM in the immediate future — we have already seen some of these — in the name of overall “spec balancing”.

Talent tree changes that will not buff the bad talent choices in certain lines, but rather nerf the currently very powerful (“only choice”) ones. Talent tree changes may also include a few new items designed to fill in some play style holes, as it seems unlikely that Blizz will actually give us anything back without also taking something away.

Some time in 7.2, traps in some form will be restored to all hunter specs, and possibly some additional mobility will be given to MM hunters. Unfortunately, I do not expect to see the baseline problems addressed. There are just too many and they are too fundamental.

For example, I do not expect to see a rewrite of MM play style that actually reflects the “class fantasy” of a real marksman instead of the current “spray everything in sight” approach.

I do not expect to see any help for the fact that MM is completely RNG-based.

I do not expect to see a skill-based focus generator for BM, nor do I expect any significant improvement in the whole beast control mess, or any fixes to the now-puny surge capability, or any move towards skill-controlled dps enhancements in the artifact tree.

Possibly, by the end of the expansion, hunters will be in a somewhat better position than we are now, but watch for Blizz to not learn any lessons and totally destroy the class again in 8.0.

So, yes, I am glad that the Game Director has seen fit to address the hunter community, but I am still angry that it took so long, and I will wait to see some follow-through before I let myself get too excited about it.

Late edit: The first hunter forum thread hit max less than 24 hours after it appeared, so the current active thread is here. Also be aware there appears to be a posting bug that results in your first attempt at a reply just sending it into the ether, although a second attempt will succeed. I recommend you copy your entire forum reply before trying to post it, so if it disappears you can just paste and try again.

First things first. Any of you who play a hunter, whether main or alt, please take a moment and go to the new thread and make your feelings known, in a calm and professional tone. (Emotion about the subject is fine, spittle-flecked invective and hateful language is not.) If you do not have the time to post, at least peruse some of the comments and give some feedback in the form of a Like or even a Dislike. It seems that sudden and massive response is the best way to get Blizz’s attention these days.

I have to admit, I was excited by the fact that there was finally a Blue post acknowledging the existence of hunters, and even soliciting feedback on the massive changes to the class. This of course is a sad commentary, because there have been literally thousands of pleas over the last 8-9 months begging Blizz to respond to serious and legitimate concerns about the current state of the hunter class, all stubbornly ignored. So it feels a little bit shameful that when we finally get one small acknowledgement that there might be some problems, my response is to wiggle like a happy puppy.

I commend Ornyx for starting the forum thread — nothing bad on him over this — but we simply cannot ignore the big turd in the punch bowl here:

Why now? And why a brand new thread, when there is a massive amount of forum input from hunter class forums as well as from Legion test forums?

With 5 days to go until Legion launch, the timing certainly seems strange. I have more questions than answers at this point.

Is Ornyx’s thread something he is doing on his own initiative, or is it part of a larger Blizz plan to lay the foundation for significant class changes in 7.1?

Why is it necessary to restate points already stated multiple times in other forums — in fact, in the very forums Blizz told us to provide feedback in? Do they not read those forums? Are they trying to see if hunters still really really feel the same way?

What is the point of this exercise? Are there actual plans to address the deep flaws in every hunter spec, or is this just a mechanism to allow hunters to release a little steam? Worse, is the move designed to give false hope, just to shut hunters up for a while? (The disconnected office thermostat ploy.)

Will we ever get the results of Ornyx’s initiative — that is, will we get an official response to the concerns, beyond “We hear you and we are thinking about it. There, there.” He stated in his original post that he intends to take the compiled responses “to the devs”, but what that means is a little unclear.

If in fact the initiative is the basis for 7.1 changes, is there any hope that they will be anything but superficial? The small responses to date indicate Blizz fails to understand — or is unwilling to deal with — fundamental flaws in spec design.

Slightly off topic, but not really: Ornyx admitted he does not play a hunter, which makes me wonder if any of the devs making drastic changes play a hunter seriously, beyond as a fun leveling and soloing alt (which btw is not really so fun any more). No one who has played a hunter for a long time, who has loved the hunter class, could possibly have made the class-altering changes we have seen. Come on, Blizz, come clean — Do any of you actually main a hunter?

Short post today, but I wanted to get this out there to help build the response. I choose to take Ornyx’s initiative as a positive sign of Blizz’s commitment to not abandon the hunter class. I hope I am not proven wrong.